For Comedic Effect
by MeridianGrimm
Summary: Pidge gets her hands on blueprints for the lions and has a bit of fun.


This is for Oort on AO3 because xe is generally awesome and I hope this is what xe was looking for :D

Rated T for potty mouth

* * *

Pidge hears footsteps clink across the metal flooring in the corridor and immediately jumps back over to the tool she's supposed to be repairing for Coran, some analogue to an electric screwdriver that works on magic space ships. By the time Hunk ambles in with his helmet under his arm, she's whistling the opening theme to The Next Generation and scrubbing the dirt off a gear from the ten thousand year old piece of machinery.

"Oh, hey Pidge, Allura was looking for you, she was wondering if you'd seen – ah, there they are on the desk."

"There what are?" Pidge asks innocently.

"She was just looking for the blueprints for the lions, you know, the ones she found in the records room." Allura has been down there for weeks trying to learn more about the castle's capabilities and supplement her knowledge of military strategy. It's a good plan, one that Pidge vocally supports because it will give Pidge time to sort through all the data-collection devices stored in a room the size of a small aircraft hangar. She knows that when Allura exhausts the Altean library, she'll want to move on to bigger things like catching up on all the history that happened while she and Coran were in the cryo-chambers. To do that, it will definitely fall to Pidge to figure out how to connect Altean tech with whatever interfaces they find on other planets. Altea may have been at the height of technology ten thousand years ago, but data interfaces on other planets have developed in different directions since then. It'll be like trying to stick a floppy disk into a machine that's only equipped with USB ports.

Pidge remembers that she's supposed to answer. "Ah, yes, those. They're just… out. Allura must have been looking at them earlier and forgot that she left them here." What Pidge is planning will work better if no one knows what's coming.

"Okay," Hunk says, accepting her lie. He slides on his helmet and switches on the communicator. "Hey, Allura, just found them, they're in the repairs room. Yeah, Pidge is here." He glances around. "Her helmet's here, but it's on the other work table. Yep, that's why she didn't hear you." After Allura's response, he disconnects the mic and removes his helmet.

"Everything okay?" she asks.

"It's fine." Hunk rolls up the blueprints and strolls out, leaving Pidge alone. The only sound in the room besides the hum of the ship is the sigh of someone whose plans have been foiled. She'd only had a couple more sheets left to memorize when Hunk walked in. On the upside, though, she'd been smart enough to start with the designs that she's most likely to exploit. Namely, the Red and Blue Lions' blueprints.

Pidge flips open her notebook – not her diary, that's a decoy now in case Hunk gets his hands on it again – and she begins to write.

* * *

Lance and Keith have been getting along a little better than when they first became paladins, but training exercises still bring out their competitive sides. From the speakers connecting all five lions, Pidge can hear Hunk's sighed "not again" as Lance declares a race between himself and Keith to the tallest rock formation ahead.

They're flying low to the ground and Keith and Lance approach a region with dozens of smaller but no less dangerous rock outcroppings. Pidge snickers in anticipation. Lance comes up on a boulder to his left and veers directly into it. "What the _fuck_ ," she hears as he bounces off the rock and spins until he can right himself. "Where did that sucker come from?"

"Oooh, looks like the modification worked," Pidge declares gleefully, clapping her hands.

Lance is too busy screaming at Keith for "cheating" to hear her, but Hunk speaks up. "What did you do?"

"Oh, not much this time, I just mirrored the video feed to his screen. He'll be fine once he clears the rocks and has a straight path."

"Son of a _bitch_ ," they all hear as Keith's lion starts to spin in circles, clipping the rocks around him and jolting wildly.

"Pidge…" Shiro starts, displeasure evident in his voice.

"Once Keith breaks 200 km/h the steering gets twice as sensitive and there's more power to his left rocket than his right."

" _Pidge._ "

"Hey, I just wanted to see what would happen for scientific purposes. It's pretty funny, though, right?"

The Black Lion pulls in front of her, blocking her view of the spectacle, and Shiro looks out angrily from the cockpit at her. "I'm disappointed in you, Pidge. What if the Galra attacked right now? You've put the lives of your teammates in danger and impaired our ability to form Voltron. We have a mission to free the galaxy from Zarkon and that is the most important thing we should be working towards."

"Aw, c'mon, they're better pilots than that." Pidge checks Keith and Lance's stats in her notes. "I'm betting it'll only take 'em a couple minutes to work it out and adjust accordingly. All Lance has to do is invert the steering controls, there's even a button on his dash to do it, and Keith's just got to concentrate on the wheel a little more and steer slightly left to go straight. Uh," she adds as Keith crashes again, "mostly straight."

"When we get back, you're grounded," Shiro says.

"But they're learning better control over their lions! Who knows what crazy things they'll have to deal with if they get hit in the field!"

"That's not why you did it."

True, but Pidge isn't about to confirm that. "Give them three minutes, Shiro, and you'll see the pair of them speeding away towards the finish line again."

"I dunno," Hunk says, "I'm thinking it'll be more like two minutes for Lance. It sounds like he's less impaired than Keith."

"You wanna bet?"

"Hunk, Pidge, you two are _not_ betting on your teammates!"

* * *

Keith and Lance come back from their battle chattering about how much they bonded with their lions, and Pidge gets off with a warning.

* * *

 _I marked this fic "incomplete" because I have no idea whether or not I'll write more._

 _Come talk to me on my tumblr (meridiangrimm) about Voltron._


End file.
